scubatimo.be - Travels

Greece: Kos

Monday September 30, 2002: Departure to Kos

Woken up at 03:30! This part of our trip is always a big pain, but the cause is a good one. Drink coffee, load luggage and at 04:00 we’re ready to go. Patrick arrives on time to take us to the airport. We arrive at 04:45. Nice drive Patrick! We can check in immediately, but we need to queue a while. At around 05:15 we go on to the transit zone and have a coffee, Eef has a hot coco. At 05:40 we proceed to gate A65, that is a long way and it almost takes us 20 minutes. We can board without trouble and have a very pleasant flight. We arrive in Kos at 09:45, but local time is 10:45. It takes a long time to get out of the airplane, even longer to collect our luggage, but at 11:45 we’re ready on the bus. Off course we need to wait until the last to be dropped off at our hotel, because our hotel – Kipriotis Village – is the furthest away. After about an hour we arrive at the hotel. We check in at the reception and again there is a little van that takes us to our bungalow, number 241. It looks very nice and what a nice garden it is here. Now we have time to unpack and lie down. Until about three in the afternoon and then we get up to go for a walk. A tour in Psalidi, partially following the beach to Kos wetland. Half way the path we have taken lunch: Greek salad and dolmadakia (stuffed vine leaves). Very good and off course with a bottle of retsina. After the short walk we take a dive in the swimming pool. The pool is pretty peaceful; in the end it is already 18:00. Then we go shopping to be able to have something on our terrace tonight: retsina, ouzo, water and cola. We have a very nice room here: 1 huge double bed, 1 normal bed, TV, phone, nice bathroom, huge terrace and a small kitchenette. At 19:30 we go for diner, after we first had an aperitif in our room: ouzo-cola. In the meantime it is almost dark outside. The food has not much of variation, but is good. Also now we drink retsina and water. Then on the terrace drink something and start writing the diary. At 22:00 we go to sleep: we’re completely exhausted

Tuesday October 1, 2002: Visit Kos city

At the very nice hour of 08:30 we wake up after a bad night of rest. Timo has pain in his tailbone and can only sleep on one side or on his belly. He kept Eef awake for a long time, but in the end the amount of sleep is OK. We quickly go to have breakfast; you know what quickly is on vacation. Because we have slept too long, we can’t go to the Sunsnacks meeting; we’re 20 minutes late. After breakfast we change clothing to go to Kos city on foot. For breakfast Timo had worn his jeans: at the hotel there is a dress code. In the evening a man (they don’t talk about the women) wear long trousers. This is kind of disgusting, that they tell people what to wear on their holidays. Timo had put on his jeans, because he did not know if this rule would apply also in the morning. But it’s not for breakfast. We take our bag pack and go to Kos on foot. We keep a good pace and about half an hour later we arrive at the harbor of Kos. Here are a lot of private yachts of all different nationalities. We thought we already arrived in the centre, but from here the Mandraki harbor was about 15 more minutes walk. We walked next to the sea and passed the fortress from the Knight of Saint John. First we want to find out when and for how much money we can go to the different islands in the neighborhood. We would like to visit Kalymnos, Leros and certainly Nissyros, which has a volcano; not to be missed! We ask for info at two different travel agencies; both of them cost almost the same, but there is a difference in the return time. We don’t know, what to choose. So we first start a walk through the city or not, maybe we first should check out the other part of town. Here is also an agency with the same possibilities and with the same conditions. We pass along a fountain of dolphins and a mini fresh fish market. The market is actually five men sitting on a chair with umbrella and crates with a lot of fish in them. Some fish are still alive and kicking, others are accompanied by a herd of flies, not really nice, but nobody minds. We then return to the fortress where the city walk starts. We walk along a street with a whole bunch of travel agencies, we compare the prices and the hours; it reminds us to the hunt for cigarettes on Rhodes. We book two different trips and spend directly 80 Euro. We certainly can leave to Nissyros and Kalymnos, that’s for sure. Then we move on to the fortress to finally start our tour. The fortress is indeed also our first thing to visit. It’s almost midday when we enter there, 3 Euro entrance fee, but really worth seeing. We walk around in the fortress itself almost 45 minutes, there are a lot of nice views, stones, too much to mention and too much to take pictures of it all. When we go out of the fortress crossing the bowed bridge, we walk straight onto the plane tree of Hippocrates. The legend says this tree is from the time of Hippocrates himself, but this is obviously not true, because this tree is about 5 to 6 hundred years old and Hippocrates lived more than 2400 years ago. They really try to misinform people, these Greeks, but this time it was just a nice try. Next to the plane tree there is also a fountain and a mosque with a minaret off course. Our tour book guides us through a nice route with all different little restaurants to the archeological site of the agora. Everything dates from the second century BC, also the mosaics and the pillars, really nice. We take a short rest, drink something and then move on to see the next. We already have seen a lot of stones and remains today and we will see more today. Passing two pleasant squares with a museum, market hall and mosque we enter the street of the 25th and 31st March, strange naming standards, but we have seen this already in the past in Greece. In these streets are the Roman themes, just missed them, but we won’t return there and we’ve heard that it was not really much to see here. We walk past the Hellenistic stadium, but can’t locate this very well, because of the huge plants here. We can see a lot of stones, but we can’t determine if they are new or old. Didn’t find it. But then we arrive at the western sites of the city. Here it is a mixture of Greek and Roman sites and remains, so it is pretty difficult to see what is what and where it is or was located. A good thing we have taken also another guidebook with us and now we can learn everything we want about the Nympfeum with the mosaics, about the different old streets, about the old gymnasium and other buildings. Close to this site is an amphitheater, called Odeum. Following the Odos Gregorios we also come along the Casa Romana. We don’t enter here because we’ve had enough sites for today and besides we’re getting a bit hungry. So we return to the harbor to have a snack, just a few pieces of fruit or something like that. First we check out temple of Dionysus from a distance and then go to the harbor. Look there for an open shop, which is quite difficult at this time of the day. At 14:30 most of the Greeks take their siesta. We look for an open shop and after 15 minutes we find a small bakery and buy a cheese sandwich and four little croissants. We eat those with a view to the harbor. After this late lunch we go back to the hotel. We need to walk another 45 minutes. We do this at a fast tempo, we cross a lot of people. Once in a while we need to stop and protect ourselves against the sun. Eef’s shoulders are already burnt by the sun. We arrive pretty tired at the hotel and immediately go for a swim in the hotel pool. Eef has a blister and I cut it, so we can quickly resume swimming. We rest a bit, take a shower, schedule some things for tomorrow and then go for diner at around 19:30. We like it a lot off course, we’re doing great. After diner we get cards to send to our beloved who stayed home. We write all of them, watch Champion’s League and go to bed. A pretty busy day, but we had good fun. All OK.

Wednesday October 2, 2002: The western part of Kos

Today we are awake pretty early; it was only 06:30. We try to get to sleep again, but in the end we get up at 07:00. Ten minutes later we’re at the restaurant for breakfast and we even have a free table outside, nice. Yesterday we were in the big area, but today there were about 20 tables set all around the terraces. It is much nicer to have breakfast outside. Eef is happy and she thinks it’s good, that there are some pancakes every morning, yesterday with chocolate and today with white sugar. We had planned to see the western part of the island today, but therefore we needed a scooter or a car. At the hotel we could rent a car, but there was nobody there at 08:15, although it was open at eight. This is typically Greek, but we would like to have a car today to see the island. Across the street there is a small agency to rent a car. We go and check it out, but there are only 2 types of Jeep available today and tomorrow and the price was 78 or 83 Euro and we thought that was a bit too much. It comes to our mind the hotel next to ours also rents cars. We go there, but also still closed and it opens in ten minutes. We go to a small shop and buy some water already and shampoo (we did not bring ours). This gentleman opens the agency almost on time and we enter the agency and possibilities. Today we get a Hyundai Atos with airco for 70 Euro for the two days and we quickly decide to go ahead, otherwise we’re loosing too much time and there is no time left to see the island. We fill out the forms and Timo drives the mega-Atos. Hey ho let’s go! We immediately stop to check the map where we need or want to go to. We leave direction Kos city to take the so-called highway there to the west. Now it appears to be a bit farther than we thought yesterday: 4 kilometers, we did well yesterday. We now try to drive to the point furthest away and that is Kefalos and the Latra-mountain range. After about an hour – we lost some time to fill up the car – we arrive in Kefalos. In front of us there is about 2 or 3 kilometer of beach and hotels. We just drive through it to the village of Kefalos itself. Because there are no road signs and no direction indicators Timo just tries to drive as straight as possible to follow the main road. We get to the other side of the village without really knowing where we are. We have ere a beautiful view to the plain below. We then see a sign to the Agios Stefanos basilica. The ruins are very close to the beach and also close to the island Kastri; it is very, very beautiful here. Nice pieces of mosaic, but most of them are covered with soil to protect them from destruction by the tourists. We stay here about 30 minutes and then return to Kefalos through the plain. The road to the village is very steep with a lot of curves. Just before we reach the centre we see an indicator to the ruins of the fortress of Kefalos. We park the car, go up on foot, but there is not really much to see, except again a beautiful view over the plain. We see the fortress better from a distance from the parking space we had. In Kefalos we did not yet reach the most western part of the island and we’re now planning on going there. Timo uses his good sense of orientation and we follow a road to the point where we see indications. We arrived at a point where we can choose: to Agios Ioannis or to Agios Theologos. We first drive to Agios Ioannis 7 kilometers away from here. The road is really cool: in the centre there is a part with asphalt and along this row there is another meter with rocks and sand on every side. The road goes up and down and we don’t like it much. We encounter: sheep, goats, two hunters with their prey and the dogs. On the top we see a little monastery, really nice with white and bleu and next to it a plane tree, an old and big one. You can see these trees a lot here in Kos. We stop to enjoy the peace, the sun and the view and then turn back. We go to the church of Agios Theologos. We could even go on today, but that would be to the beach and we don’t feel like it today, so we go back to Kefalos and the plain of Kambos. Along this long beach road there are a lot of restaurants and we stop to have lunch at “Scorpio”. Timo has calamari and Eef moussakas. We pay 15 Euro and discuss what our route is going to be. From this point we turn back to Antimacheia. On the way to it we stop for half an hour at the ‘Camel beach’. From the main road there is a small path to a restaurant and then down to the beach. It’s very difficult to do this by car, but Timo manages to do it very good. We rest a while, Timo takes a swim and Eef stays in the sun. After this we drive up again and need to use first gear, Eef on foot and Timo drives up. We have decided to include today a part of the centre of Kos. We drive to Antimacheia, where also the airport is located. Apart from this, there is nothing to see/ so we try it somewhere else: about 5 kilometers lies Mastihari and there are the ruins of a castle (rocks again!). When we enter the village we think: we know this. And indeed during the transfer from the airport to the hotel we have passed this village too. We had to stop then to drop off some tourists. We park the car and look for the ruins that are supposed to be in the area of Hotel Achilleas beach. We walk a while, but can’t find the ruins, not even the hotel. Since we’re already on the move for a long time, we stop looking. We don’t find any ruins, no hotels in this area. The only beautiful things here are the islands here near the beach. We move on without following any specific directions, then we hit a nuclear plant and also the hotel we were looking for, but still no ruins. We have spent enough time here, so we drive off to Antimacheia. There is another castle we want to see, so we head that direction. Now we have more success and easily find it. The only thing we have is a bunch of goats crossing the roads. We arrive at the castle, but due to works in progress we’re not allowed to enter. The tourist has off course found a solution: if you walk around the huge walls, you can walk through the walls and enter the terrain of the castle. We follow other people and find the entrance too. This part is pretty impressive because we have those big walls next to us, but not impressive as to the contents: only stones, high grasses, nice views and little people. It was still worth the effort to come over here and make a stop. Then we return to our hotel. We want’ to swim in the pool, but due to the hard wind we don’t stay very long. We stayed at the pool for half an hour today. We then come back in our room, take a shower, rest a bit and then go to have diner very early. It was very good (as usual) and at 20:30 we’re back in our bungalow. We try to relax and go to bed early. We’re tired, but it was worth it all.

Thursday October 3, 2005: Central Kos

Today we get up a little later than yesterday, because yesterday was a bit too early. Today it’s 07:50 we make sure everything is OK, before we have breakfast, then we can take our bag pack directly. First thing we visit this morning is the Asklepion. We go there first thing in the morning to avoid the heat. And when we arrive there, the effort pays off. There are only a dozen tourists and in some places in the wind it is even chilly, but not for long. The whole sanctuary is divided into three terraces. The bottom one has the entrance, the thermes, a terrace for visitors and a source with the statue of Pan. Those are the most important things to see. The general impression we have is overwhelming. Passing the second terrace we follow a path to the third. On the second there are remains of a temple and of the altar of Asklepion. Remains of an Apollo-temple and of old priest-buildings are located on this terrace. The number of rocks is already high, but Eef explains everything with all the details from our guidebook. Using 60 stairs we reach the top terrace that is also the biggest one with pieces of temples and pillars. And again we’re amazed of all the tricks the Greeks and Romans were already able to perform. They had special skills for that period. The Asklepion is located a bit higher on a hill, so we have a great view to Kos city and the island close by. After this visit of about an hour we drive to our next place of interest. It’s not yet really clear what it will be, but we try to reach for remote point of central Kos: Pyli. There are some special things to see: we park the car near the Agios Georgios district. From here a road takes us to the district higher: Agios Nikolaos. We follow it for about 2.5 kilometer. It only takes us 20 minutes to reach the central square of this part and once we’re there we follow the signs to the “pigi”, the source. The water spitting is already going on for about 400 years. The locals come here to fill bottles with water. They arrive here with about 40 bottles, fill them and then drive off on their scooter: how they do we can’t understand. Now we’re here anyway, we also check out the “Grave of Harmylos”: the mythical ancestor of the first dynasty of Kos. A small road leads to the grave nothing special to be honest, just a collection of rocks and that’s supposed to be a grave. It might have been a bit more interesting, when we could have entered it, but now the entrance is blocked by wire. Behind the grave there is a chapel and an old man is giving tours here. He talks a bit about the icons and Eef en I light a candle. Eef with the icon of Maria and Timo with the icon of Josef. We leave some coins and move on. We have seen it all now in upper Pyli and leave for the next site: ancient Pyli. On a small, steep road with lots of curves we drive up. Here is an ancient village from the Middle Ages (read: remains) and a ruin of a castle. We walk through the village accompanied by a bunch of goats, but we don’t feel like climbing the mountain. In our tourist guide they write it is a climb of 70 minutes, which is quite long. So we leave this point of the island and go to Zia. Again following small roads we enter this nice looking village. We quickly buy some stuff: 4 bottles of oil (mama Linda, mama Betty, Roel and for ourselves), we visit a church and check out the watermill. This mill is located in the middle of a tourist shop and is still working, but not today. We walk around in the village and discuss what we still want to visit. A lot is mentioned in the books about a salt plain, that is a protected area and that is very attractive to Timo. We look for the road between Tigaki and Marmari and stop right next to an old saltpan. Timo thinks he can spot two flamingos in the distance. We walk around the lake and then drive towards a supermarket, that we saw on our way down there. At Konstantinos we buy food for our lunch and general things, it’s already 14:30: ouzo, metaxa, fresh juice. Outside on the sidewalk we eat and see if there still are things we need to see. In Platani there are two graveyards: 1 Jewish and 1 Islamite. We still need to do three things in order for us to say we have seen the whole island: the thermes of Agios Fokas, the windmill in Antimacheia and a duck-pond. It’s already late in the day, so we want to end the visiting things today so we drive direction of the hotel and further to the thermes. We park the car up the mountain and walk down about 2 kilometers to the thermes. The sea is filled with people and also the small area closed with rocks, especially created for the tourists. We’re surprised the water is very hot, so hot we would not be able to use it as shower water. We’ve quickly spotted this is no place for us and apart from hot water flowing in the sea, there is nothing to see. We’re already a bit tired, but we still have half a tank of gas and we need to return it on ¼ filled. We decide to drive to Antimacheia to see the windmill that we could not find yesterday. We stop at a pond Linopotis. Here supposedly there are turtles, but we can’t find them. We are on the road for about 9 hours already and go back to the hotel. We make a few detours to make sure we made the 300 kilometers this vacation: pretty ridiculous, tour on the parking lot. We return the car and the key and hit the shower. Afterwards Eef writes a letter to Leen and Timo starts writing the diary. At 19:30 we go for dinner, enjoy it for an hour and then go back to our room. We fall asleep immediately, because we’ve had 2 exhausting days.

Friday October 4, 2002: A day doing nothing

After the racing and driving and visits of the last two days we have decided to take a day of resting today. The only thing we ask ourselves is how long we’re going to keep it up. At 08:00 Timo got up and started to write the diaries. Half an hour later also Eef is awake. We go for breakfast, this time we have it outside in the sun. Just great! After breakfast we go to our room and put on our bathing clothes and go to the swimming pool. At 09:30 we’re ready to rest: each of us on a seat with a towel, an umbrella between the two of us and comic books to read…everything is OK. Timo is already early in the day taking a dive in the pool, but for Eef it’s still too chilly. There is a lot of wind and the sun is not shining at its hottest yet. After some time she also takes a swim: at first it’s cold, then very relaxing. We repeat these actions (swim, dry in the sun) a few times till midday and then want to do something. At 13:30 we leave on foot to Kos city. When we arrive there we start to get hungry. An hour after we left Psalidi we’re sitting on a terrace close to the agora and enjoy lunch: Greek salad (Eef) and moussakas (Timo) and off course a bottle of retsina. We stay here enjoying it and then move on. We walk around in the town. We discover nice parts of Kos with a lot of shops, looks like soukhs, the only here benefit is we are not disturbed all the time by people who want to sell stuff. We buy in an old shop 4 apples and half a kilo grapes; white ones, nice and sweet. We follow the streets through town and search for the boat that leaves to Leros on Tuesday. We decide not to book the tour yet, because we need to leave here at 10:40 and at 13:30 we would already need to leave Leros again and we don’t think it’s worth the transfer. Maybe we can do this later one. In the meantime it’s already 16:30. We take the bus back to Psalidi and it only takes ten minutes. We buy a bottle of water for tomorrow and return to the hotel. We rest a bit and take a shower and then go to the restaurant and go to bed early, because tomorrow is an early rise. We will go to Nissyros, great.

Saturday October 5, 2002: Nissyros

We’ve been waiting for this day for a while now: today we can visit the volcanic island Nissyros. Very early, at 06:45, we get up, pack our bags and go for breakfast. Eef is very happy they already serve pancakes at seven in the morning. We then take the bus to Kos from 07:45 and arrive at the harbor on time at 07:55. There we need go to an improvised desk and give our tickets and only then we can go on board. We receive company from a man from Maldegem (Belgium); he has left the hotel without his wife and takes the tour alone. He stays with us until we reach the island. We sail along the coast and see our hotel. After a trip of about two hours we arrive on Nissyros. We can walk around a bit, but need to be back at the boat at 12:30 to take the bus to the crater of the volcano. We walk without really knowing whereto and in the end reach an old castle, all the way up following a small path. It seems there are few people who know this, because there is nobody here. On the top there are beautiful ruins and very nice views. Eef can take a photo of a lizard. Well done. We go back down to the town. On the way to the harbor we buy a sandwich with cheese, because our breakfast was a while ago. Very good on time we arrive here, but the bus is not yet there. We need to wait for another 20 minutes and there comes the bus! Everyone gets on the bus and on to the volcano. The driver is nuts; we almost fell in a ravine once. Timo has no fear, but Eef has and she is not the only one. After about 15 minutes we arrive there. People had warned us about the fumes and the smells of rotten eggs, but when we get out of the bus, it is still bearable. We have about 30 minutes to visit the crater itself. We descend into the crater and then it starts to smell, not smell, stink. It is even that hard we need to protect our nose against the fumes. The smell of sulfur is unbearable. What we can see here is hardly believable: everywhere there are holes in the ground and out of these holes are fumes coming and steam. Here and there are pools of bubbling mud and water. This is really something we haven’t seen yet. Despite of the smell we could stay here for a while, but the fumes are poisonous, so we need to get back up. Our driver is a bit more careful now and he brings us back safely to the harbor. On the way to the harbor he even stops several times so we can take pictures from the crater from a distance. When we’re in the harbor we still have about an hour to do what we want. We go and sit in a bar and drink two bottles of retsina. We’re feeling great here: in the sun with a view at the sea. Retsina tastes good and after a while we get back on the boat. We arrive on the boat last and find a good spot on the second floor. We talk a while and enjoy the sun. When after an hour we arrive in the neighborhood of the thermes a cold wind starts blowing. A lot of people now wear sweaters or coats. After two hours we’re back in the harbor of Kos; it’s now 17:30. We buy a bus ticket and return to the hotel. Right next to us is the same guy we met this morning. He was telling he paid about 50 Euro for this trip at his hotel. We only paid 20, so at the hotels it was a complete rip-off. He also asked if this was our honeymoon – NOT. We would choose something better (at least further) than Kos for our honeymoon, that’s for sure. Then it all goes very quickly. We buy retsina, telephone cards in a shop and bus-tickets in the hotel. Then we take a shower and directly afterwards we go to eat? At 20:00 we phone home and everyone is happy we have heard one another. We return to our bungalow and go to sleep early, because we were awake early also today. It was really a nice experience the volcano. Eyes shut and sleep tight, goodnight.

Sunday October 6, 2002: Lazy day, still did some stuff

We’re awake early again today; we went to bed early last night, so that’s logic. We see the weather is not good at all; it’s dark and even almost cold. During breakfast our waiter says it will be for the rest of the day. Timo says that will not be the case, but if the Greeks tell that, then it might be true, we fear. We really don’t have a plan or a schedule what we want to do or see today, but we thought yesterday we would enjoy the cultural heritage of Kos today. We leave from the hotel with our bag pack around 09:00 and arrive in the centre of Kos half an hour later. We immediately go the Archeological Museum. It’s not a big museum, but it’s worth a visit and to our surprise it’s completely free entrance today. We get to see a lot of statues, mosaics from different ages. After the visit we need a break and have a drink: cola (T) and ice-coffee (E). The cold coffee is very good. Then we walk to the Casa Romana. We were here also on Tuesday, but already had an overdose of stones and ruins, so today we still take the time to visit the house. It only tales us ten minutes to get there and also here the entrance is free. The casa is a roman villa, very nice, mosaics, wall paintings and pillars (from Corinthian and Ionian). Next to the casa that was restored, there were some remains of the original one. They even knew the principle of floor heating at that time. We ask ourselves what all the round stones lying around are; maybe we’ll learn that later on. After this visit we take another break in a park opposite the casa; we have some grapes and think about our next steps today. First thing we do is buying a snorkel, because Timo already has the idea a long time and now we do it. We buy a mask and a snorkel for 22.5 Euro and that is not too expensive. After this buy we walk back to the square of peace, the square of the museum. And now we return to our hotel. It’s about 13:00 by now and the grapes have left us with a hungry feeling. We buy a sandwich with ham and cheese and one with tuna fish and we eat it while we’re walking back. Along the road there are some stalls and the people buy sponges there (from 2 to 12 Euro), but apparently there was a piece of a sponge that flew away from the stand and Timo found it. At home we try it, really stunning: from very hard to very ‘sponge’ soft. Again we reach the hotel in half an hour. We take everything to the beach and lie down. The rhythm is: snorkel – sun – snorkel – sun – swim – sun – snorkel – sun. Eef goes to the room to get some magazines. Sun – swim – sun. At 17:00 – it is getting colder now – we return to our room and already start drinking an aperitif. We clean the swimsuits and the towels. We bought 1.5 liter of retsina yesterday to make sure there was enough. Then we have diner and afterwards we rest and watch TV. We read a bit, write these travel stories and go to bed.

Monday October 7, 2002: Kalymnos and Pserimos or maybe not?

We get up very early another time, because we need to be in Kos at 08:30 to take the boat to Kalymnos. We’re both tired, as we did not sleep very well. Our neighbors had the idea to start making noise at one o’clock at night and apart from that there was a lot of rain and wind during the night. We look outside the window and only see dark clouds, it even still looks like it’s night and it really doesn’t look good. We have a quick breakfast and take the bus of 07:45 to Kos. We arrive there on time. We can’t imagine the boats are now going to leave, but they let us go on the boat. After 30 minutes we need to get off again. We go to the tourist office, where we booked the trip. The choice was: Nissyros (already did this), Bodrum (not interested) or money back (and that’s OK). We go to the other side of the street and ask there if we still can go to Kalymnos tomorrow or the day after. We can have a trip by catamaran, leave at 10:50 and return at 15:00 and pretty cheap as well – even 6.60 Euro difference. OK, let’s do it. We first look for the place in the harbor where the catamaran will land and then return to the hotel. We’re taking a risk of going back home on foot, because there were another two showers. We’re lucky and return dry to the hotel a little bit disappointed, but also happy, because we’re still able to go to Kalymnos. We rest for an hour and just when we’re back in our room there is a thunderstorm. When we’re back awake after an hour it’s already 13:00 and we’re a bit hungry. We walk to Rodini tavern and have a pizza (Eef) and gyros (Timo). Then the weather seems to turn and the sun starts to shine and we want to go for a swim, and just when we’re ready to go there is another storm coming through. We decide to lie down and rest a bit; when we’re on vacation we’re happy to rest a bit too. We won’t return back home tired. At 17:30 Timo gets up and we prepare for an evening walk, it’s starting to get dark. We walk to the beach and sit down on the sand and we enjoy the air, the peace and the entering darkness. We see the sunset at the left side over Kos city and we can see lights starting to sparkle everywhere, also in front of us in Turkey. We think this is about 5 kilometers away. After this romantic trip we go to eat, only healthy things this evening – we already had a full meal today, so we take only some fruits and vegetables. After diner we buy a bottle of tonic, good for Eef’s stomach and a cigar; we enjoy the tonic, ouzo-cola and the Cuban cigar on our terrace. We write down all the stories of the day and go to bed around 22:00. It was a very calm day, at first disappointment, but later full of hope. Tomorrow we will still make it to Kalymnos, very nice.

Tuesday October 8, 2002: Kalymnos, second try good one?

We get up early – again, we did not really have a chance to sleep a long time here. Timo was woken up by another thunderstorm. There is lightning and thunder, when he goes out for a minute to check what is going on. Eef is also awake by now and we get ready for breakfast. The bag pack is ready and everyone is ready, except for the weather … It has been raining for the last hour already; there was even hail, balls of 1 centimeter thick. After one hour and a half it stops for a moment: the whole terrain of the hotel is flooded, it has been raining too much. Now we can go to the restaurant for breakfast and then take the bus into town. We’re there at 09:15 and look for a bar, where they need to give our tickets. Because there is nobody yet behind the desk we decide to have a drink. At 10:50 the boat should leave, we wait a while and watch the Greek ‘rush’. Two older gentlemen are laughing at the waitress and everyone is laughing. The sky is blue again and we don’t expect big problems. At 10 o’clock we can exchange the voucher for our tickets to enter the catamaran. We can board with a delay of only ten minutes. The trip takes about 40 minutes and was nice, but for 4 people it ended with the head in a bag. The sea was really choppy. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, 20x; WE ARE ON KALYMNOS. We need a few minutes to rest from the “bumpy” ride and then enter the sponge factory. We stroll through the streets zigzag and we’re looking for a sandwich, but can’t find anything. So then we stop on a terrace and order 2 cola and 2 sandwich tuna fish. It tastes very good and then continue our walk. We quickly check out the remains of an old Italian settlement and a church in the harbor. The best we can do now is go to the thermes and visit the monastery and we’re now ready to do so. First are the thermes. When we are about 1 kilometer far we feel something wet. We’re going to be hit by a shower and indeed that is what happens. We run back to the centre and seek shelter under a truck. After 15 minutes the rain starts coming through and in fact we should be going to another spot, but the sun saves us. The shower has ended and we can continue our climb to the thermes. Oh, I forgot to mention something. Before lunch we stopped at a second sponge factory and bought two natural sponges; the Greek woman was very friendly and polite. We could not resist buying something. We buy sponges with a value of 20 Euro and they give us a small one (about 3 Euro) for free. Back to the thermes. We follow a road along the coastline and arrive at a bay. We both enjoy the peace and quietness after the shower. Then we return to the direction of the town, because we only have about 1 hour left to get on the boat. It starts to rain again, so we enter another sponge factory and buy a sponge, only for decoration of our bathroom. Outside at the boulevard we sit down and wait for the boat. We have lost too much time to go to the monastery, maybe another time. A few moments later we move to the harbor, there is a spot with more sun, more to see; in short it’s better to sit here. We love the sun, peace the sea and at 15:00 we go to the large part of the harbor, where the big boats can come. All the time it looks like ants’ nest, that busy and punctual as Greeks are the boat leaves at 15:30 to arrive 40 minutes later in Kos. We can look back at a short visit on Kalymnos, but it was a nice one. All of a sudden we want to have ice cream. Eef takes a banana split and Timo ice with strawberries and we like it very much. Then we go to the bus station and miss the bus of 16:45 by 2 seconds. So we go on foot. Halfway we walk on the sand on the beach, then again on the street. We have added a serious amount to the kilometers we’ve walked. We have an aperitif and a shower. At 17:45 Timo gets a cal from his colleague and he helps him out and then returns with his thoughts to his vacation. We arrive later than previous days in the restaurant and it is busier then too. We have a healthy meal, a lot of vegetables and fruits, because we have enough of the fat hotel-food. At 20:30 we call home and then return to our bungalow. We notice there is nothing left to drink here, so we return to the shop and buy retsina, cola and 2 cigars. We enjoy it all on our terrace and then go to bed.

Wednesday October 9, 2002: The last whole day: enjoy and do nothing

We don’t get up early today and take our time for the breakfast; we stay there for about an hour. We’re not the kind of people to stay put, so we go for a walk. Then we decide this day will be our do-nothing-day. We lie down on the beach, even though the weather is not that good for the third consecutive day. We swim and relax in the sun. Timo walks on the beach and searches for the white back plates of the cuttlefish. Those plates (cuttlebones) are often found along the beach. Timo is walking for half an hour and the sun goes away then too. Small drops are falling now and we go inside. The rain does not take long and we walk together over the beach to Kos. Half way the way to Kos we are far enough and turn back. Already 13:00 and we look for something to eat. We enter a cozy restaurant at Spyros. We already passed it on our way to and from Kos and now we decided to enter the restaurant. There is a Flemish person sitting here and he says this is a good choice. We order a Greek salad and kalamari saganaki, spicy with garlic, very well. The Flemish guy addresses us and we start talking about Greece and Kos. He lives here and saw immediately we were not really the type of people to stay at Kipriotis Village. We receive his card and will need to send an e-mail later on. After this nice talk and lunch (1.5 hour) we return to the hotel. We take a nap and then take a walk following the eco-path of the area ‘Wetlands of Psalidi’. A light brown dog is running behind us all the time. A nice and friendly dog, but he keeps on following us. We don’t have the heart to send him away, so we try something else. We sit down at the beach, but he comes to sit with us. A while later we want to go to our room again, but he keeps on following us. Other people call him and we don’t pay any attention to him, but he follows us. We enter the hotel and come back out another way and guess who is waiting for us there: indeed the same dog. Then he meets two Dutch people who are playing with him and he starts to be with those people, so we can go to our bungalow very easy with being followed. We take a shower and go for diner. We really take our time and enjoy ourselves here and now: we stay in the restaurant almost 2 hours. After diner we return to our room: one of us has a thing/person on his mind, the other one needs to guess what it is. Stupid isn’t it? We suddenly realize we can’t light our last candle, because we’ve lost the stone from the lighter and the matches are wet. Timo quickly dresses up and buys a lighter at the hotel-shop. The candles are burning for the last time and we know now it’s almost done. Today we go to bed at 23:30 and that did not happen a lot here.

Thursday October 10, 2002: The last day on Kos

We’re awake at 07:00 (again). We look out the window and see a clear sky and a rising sun, that reflects on the bright white walls of the other bungalows. The sparrows sing and the others birds play and fly and they all look very happy. We both enjoy this sight being brought to us by this early hour. The swallows fly and dive over the green grass. The flowers grow over the walls and provide a rose and red glow to the white walls. We are sitting on the bungalow terrace and feel we’re hungry, so we get up to go for our last breakfast here. It’s already 08:00 by now. We try to enjoy the last hours here in Kos for 200 percent, but first we need to do something not cool: we go to the reception to pay 26 Euro to keep the room till 18:00 tonight. In that way we’re still able to take a shower, before the bus comes to bring us to the airport. That should be around 17:15, take off is at 20:50; that is well in time. We’re ready at 09:15. The rest of the day will be filled with doing nothing, swim in the sea the pool; we will see later on what we will do today. The weather is nice, so nothing can go wrong anymore. We start by the pool, are there early and have several options to choose the sun beds. We switch between swimming and lying in the sun. We repeat this several times and then we leave the pool, since there are coming a lot more people and we don’t like this. Small children come playing right I front of us with a lot of noise and we don’t like that today. It’s already 13:00 so we don’t have a lot of time left. Eef has been talking about mini-golf; there is one field available close to the beach. We still have time so we start a game. Timo isn’t too good at the game, so Eef wins without problems – what was anticipated. We hit all holes twice, one without the obstacles and another time with them. It doesn’t really make a big difference, but we are busy doing something and we like it. Then we dress up to go to Spyros to have lunch. Dress up means: apart from shorts we also wear a T-shirt and Eef changes her bathing suit into shorts and top. Then we’re ready to eat. Choice of the day: Greek salad, retsina, lamb chops and cola and tonic, because we’re thirsty. It’s just too good. We talk a while with the Flemish guy that is here again and enjoy the meal for about 1.5 hours; our last meal here on Kos. At 15:00 we rest on our terrace and take a shower. We pay a lot for the two showers, so we take our time. Today we have a central theme of ‘enjoy it all’ and it is like this already whole the time here and it is supposed to be like this. At 17:15 the bus for the transfer picks us up. We drive 1.5 hours, but we have a nice conversation with the people behind us. At the airport the queue is stretched to outside the building and we think; what is all this? There is a baggage check before you can enter the airport, that’s why that many people are here. We don’t sit next to each another; there is a path between us. It’s not that bad, you can stretch the legs from time to time. After a long time waiting at the airport and a flight of a bit more than 3 hours we arrive in Brussels on time, even ten minutes too early. Maurits and Betty pick us up. We join them at their place to have a drink and to talk about the holiday. We arrive here tired and drink a few beers and a few Duvels. There is almost no better way to return home. It is cold in Belgium; we come from 27 ° and here it’s only 7 degrees. At three in the night we’re deadbeat and they brings u home. This is the end of another very good – but off course too short – vacation.